I went digging through a few newly launched POS chains out of boredom, and what I found made me shake my head. Honestly, the market cap of some of these chains is even less than the bricks held in a few big wallets in our circle. If a couple of whales coordinated even slightly, they could flip a chain in minutes. These days, many new public chains’ security is basically held together by the idea that “nobody’s paying attention.” Once hackers genuinely set their sights on it, it’s absolutely going to shatter at the first hit.
Right at this moment, @BabylonLabs_io popped up and said, “Don’t be afraid—I’ll bring in the Bitcoin big brother to be your bodyguard!” The logic sounds pretty punchy: if your POS chain lacks confidence, then we’ll borrow the big pie (BTC) and use it as collateral. BTC is on the scale of trillions—anyone who wants to get rough has to weigh the cost of an attack. It’s like Babylon set up a security agency: left hand holds everyone’s BTC, right hand sends them to stand guard for each smaller chain.
But I’m the kind of person who likes to nitpick details after making transactions for a long time. If you think it through carefully, this business is actually quite flimsy:
First, who pays the security fee?
When everyone locks up real BTC, they’re giving up liquidity—the ability to sell anytime—as well as other opportunities to earn yield. Since those new POS chains are burning money to stay alive, how much real BTC can they actually scrape together to “pay protection money” to BTC holders? If the interest they offer can’t even beat risk-free returns, who would go do this locking-ones-own-stupidity?
Second, is the “bombardment” (i.e., slashing) mechanism really reliable?
The EOTS technology the project keeps touting sounds impressive: if a node acts maliciously, the BTC gets confiscated right away. The concept is quite full and vivid, but code is written by people. What if there’s a bug somewhere, or the logic ends up judging incorrectly—then who gets punished? The malicious actor, or innocent retail users who become the cannon fodder? Engineering implementation is full of pitfalls.
Third, even if BTC is huge, it can’t handle too many customers.
Babylon wants to cover dozens of chains at the same time, but the amount of BTC available for staking is limited. Chain A gets a portion, Chain B gets a portion, and in the end, everyone’s security defense gets diluted. Security isn’t like cutting a cake—you can’t expect it to be evenly shared and still work for everyone.
Babylon’s model is essentially a “take rate.” If POS chains can’t afford high rental fees, then dividends from the project’s tokens are just another kind of big pie-in-the-sky promise. In the early stage they can rely on expectations to prop things up, but once token unlocks and a sell-off hits later, who can withstand it?
Are you really willing to lock up the BTC in your hands and use it to serve as security for those unknown new chains?
#baby $BABY $BTC
Right at this moment, @BabylonLabs_io popped up and said, “Don’t be afraid—I’ll bring in the Bitcoin big brother to be your bodyguard!” The logic sounds pretty punchy: if your POS chain lacks confidence, then we’ll borrow the big pie (BTC) and use it as collateral. BTC is on the scale of trillions—anyone who wants to get rough has to weigh the cost of an attack. It’s like Babylon set up a security agency: left hand holds everyone’s BTC, right hand sends them to stand guard for each smaller chain.
But I’m the kind of person who likes to nitpick details after making transactions for a long time. If you think it through carefully, this business is actually quite flimsy:
First, who pays the security fee?
When everyone locks up real BTC, they’re giving up liquidity—the ability to sell anytime—as well as other opportunities to earn yield. Since those new POS chains are burning money to stay alive, how much real BTC can they actually scrape together to “pay protection money” to BTC holders? If the interest they offer can’t even beat risk-free returns, who would go do this locking-ones-own-stupidity?
Second, is the “bombardment” (i.e., slashing) mechanism really reliable?
The EOTS technology the project keeps touting sounds impressive: if a node acts maliciously, the BTC gets confiscated right away. The concept is quite full and vivid, but code is written by people. What if there’s a bug somewhere, or the logic ends up judging incorrectly—then who gets punished? The malicious actor, or innocent retail users who become the cannon fodder? Engineering implementation is full of pitfalls.
Third, even if BTC is huge, it can’t handle too many customers.
Babylon wants to cover dozens of chains at the same time, but the amount of BTC available for staking is limited. Chain A gets a portion, Chain B gets a portion, and in the end, everyone’s security defense gets diluted. Security isn’t like cutting a cake—you can’t expect it to be evenly shared and still work for everyone.
Babylon’s model is essentially a “take rate.” If POS chains can’t afford high rental fees, then dividends from the project’s tokens are just another kind of big pie-in-the-sky promise. In the early stage they can rely on expectations to prop things up, but once token unlocks and a sell-off hits later, who can withstand it?
Are you really willing to lock up the BTC in your hands and use it to serve as security for those unknown new chains?
#baby $BABY $BTC